sweet tooth of placidity

there has been a lot going on in the world in recent year, and people are outraged,
sort of
actually, given the sheer outrageousness of the various finanicial and political misdeeds of the last few years, the level of outrage is surprisingly low
people are jaded, and this is reflected in many anecdotal interviews
why is that?

do the shenanigans at AIG leave a bad taste in your mouth?
do you feel nauseated by the bank bailout?
do you feel the bile rise when you read the headlines?
do you "taste a bit of vomit" when you read the latest breaking news?

well, you should: in a rather fascinating article in Science 323, 1222, 27 Feb '09
Chapman et al propose a Oral to Moral (subscription) hypothesis. Free abstract here, and Perspectives article here.

The basic conjecture, backed by some interesting experiments, is that the evolutionary adaption for bitter taste - the instinctive disgust at bad food, which seems to go back about 500 Myrs to sea anemones ability to evert their digestive cavity, has been co-opted for other reflexes, in particular the revulsion towards disease carriers like cockroaches, and the moral outrage at unfairness.

bat star everts stomach as it read NYT business section

So, when you get outraged at financial unfairness, you really do feel bitter.

It is super-rational to feel the unfairness: there was an interesting series of microeconomics experiments over the last few years, where different populations played ultimatum games, with real money.
In these one player gets a sum of money, and can offer to divide it with the other player. If the other player accepts, then they get the share agreed on, if the other player doesn't the money is forfeit.
A "fair" offer is 50:50 split, or close to it, but a "rational" player will accept any offer as some money for them is better than none for either, right?

Well, primitive populations and MBAs act rationally in the experiment, but educated developed world citizens hold out for "fair" plays. As I recall small business owners in Minnesota were absolute sticklers for 50:50 splits...

Why?
Well, because at some super-rational level we are planning on playing iterated ultimatum games, and we don't "need" the money, so we take the opportunity loss to reject a rational but unfair offer to punish unfair players; even in games where we won't iterate with them, but in expectation that they will iterate with someone else, and vica versa, and need to be taught a lesson.

So, the problem is that we, the taxpayers are playing iterated financial shenanigans.
I may not ever come across an AIG-like CDS scam again, but my children might, so I want principled fairness, not rational decisions about letting the scum get their little bonuses.
The average banker wanting their seven figure bonus is not thinking iterated game; they're thinking they'll take the loot as long as the going is good, and then scamper.

So we are right to be bitter.
Outraged.

But we're not.
Not really.
There's some reaction, but nothing sustained, nothing serious.
And there hasn't been over any of these outrages.

So... maybe... if the "oral to moral" conjecture is correct,
does it work both ways?

I mean, you know it does.
Sweet food is mood affecting.
Chocolate makes you mellow.
Increasing your blood sugar lowers temper.

What if, we are tempering our outrage, shortcutting the evolutionary adaption to unfair play, through our diet.
Food is far too sweet, and there is generally too much of it, and the prepared food which is a large component of most peoples' diet is generally, in the US, loaded with corn syrup.
High fructose corn syrup.

So, don't be bitter.
Have a french fry. With ketchup.
Or a twinkie.
And then you can mellow and realize it isn't that serious.
Nothing to be outraged about.

No, seriously.
What if our over-sweet modern diet is systematically shifting our emotional baselines, and in particular eliminating our capability for sustained outrage at unfairness.

If you don't believe me (and I'm not sure I believe me), then consider this:
who are the stereotypes of outrage?
The whole food ecotypes, and the burly alpha males and underweight A type females.
Not that I want to stereotype or anything...
And what do they have in common: healthy grains, high protein atkins diets, and diet diets.
No carbs. No sugar.

They can be outraged, sometimes even about the right things.
Want some ketchup with that?

PS: ok, what I really want is someone to test this conjecture...
do a "disgust test" ala Chapman et al and then do one while/just after the subjects
munch on some high fructose corn syrup laced snacks - blind test of course, half the test subjects get palatable but unsweetened pap.
If you really want to go to town, also compare artificial sweetener mediated outrage with real sugar to see if it is the taste or the blood chemistry...

but, when I say "someone" I mean "someone else", who is willing to do the "use of human subjects" paperwork...

It is not actually implausible, that if the "unfair outrage" response co-adapted the "bitter taste" response, then an imposed "sweet taste" will override or soften the outrage at the unfairness, the sweet taste would literally mask the bitterness of the moral outrage.

That would make us all annoyingly predicatble.